Appearance
Discredited Claims
The claim:
"The problem Mormonism encounters is that so many of its claims are well within the realm of scientific study, and as such, can be proven or disproven. To cling to faith in these areas, where the overwhelming evidence is against it, is willful ignorance, not spiritual dedication."[1]
The CES Letter's Science section lists four "events/claims that science has discredited": the Tower of Babel ("a staple story of the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon"), a global flood ~4,500 years ago, Noah's Ark with all extant animal species aboard, and the age-of-earth/hominid-species/Neanderthal-DNA cluster.[2] The argument is that Latter-day Saint scripture and prophets require young-earth creationism, a literal global flood, a literal Tower of Babel, and a 7,000-year-old earth with no death before the Fall — and that science has falsified each.
The argument's load-bearing premise is the conflation of three categories: (a) canonized Latter-day Saint scripture, (b) what individual Church leaders have taught, and (c) what the Church has formally committed to as binding doctrine. The CES Letter treats these as one. The Church itself — since at least Brigham Young's 1871 Journal of Discourses address and most clearly in the First Presidency's 5 April 1931 memorandum to general authorities — has treated them as three.[3][4] The 2016 Church History Topics page on "Organic Evolution" states the institutional position: "The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution… is a matter for scientific study."[5] The 2016 New Era Q&A closes with a three-word doctrinal seal: "Nothing has been revealed."[6]
This article works through the four numbered claims. The pre-Adamic-death and evolution-as-mechanism questions belong to the sister article, Evolution and the Fall; the ethnic-DNA question belongs to DNA. The four claims engaged directly are the Tower of Babel and the Jaredite anchor in Ether 1, the global flood, Noah's Ark and bear speciation, and the age of the earth (including the Bible Dictionary's "4000 B.C." chronological table and the Neanderthal-DNA argument).
Worth Acknowledging
Apostles and Church Presidents have taught positions the Church has subsequently distanced from. Joseph Fielding Smith's Man: His Origin and Destiny (Bookcraft, 1954) treated young-earth creationism, no pre-Adamic death, and a literal global flood as revealed doctrine for forty years.[7] Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine (Bookcraft, 1958; 2nd ed. 1966) carried the same line.[8] Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and John Taylor — three Church Presidents — each described the flood as the earth's "baptism," language that implies total immersion.[9][10][11] For most of the twentieth century, the functional doctrine on these questions at the lay level was young-earth creationism, even though the institutional documents (1909, 1910, 1925, 1931) had always preserved the open question. The "the Church never canonized this" defense is technically true but operationally incomplete. This article presents that concession honestly before working through why the underlying framework still holds.
The Eyring epigraph and the Restoration's posture toward science
The CES Letter opens its Science section by quoting Henry Eyring:
"Since the Gospel embraces all truth, there can never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion… I am obliged, as a Latter-day Saint, to believe whatever is true, regardless of the source."[12]
Henry Eyring was one of the twentieth century's foremost theoretical chemists — Berkeley PhD 1927, Princeton faculty, University of Utah graduate dean, recipient of the National Medal of Science (1966) and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1980), namesake of the Eyring equation, author of approximately six hundred scientific publications. He was also a devout Latter-day Saint and the father of President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency.[13] Eyring himself accepted an ancient earth, evolutionary biology, and a non-global flood reading of Genesis. The Church promoted him as its most visible twentieth-century scientific representative, named buildings after him at BYU and the University of Utah, and his son joined the Quorum of the Twelve and ultimately the First Presidency. The CES Letter's section-opening epigraph is evidence for the faithful position, not against it.
The Restoration's foundational scriptures commend inquiry directly. Doctrine and Covenants 93:36 declares: "The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth."[14] D&C 88:118 instructs: "Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith"[15] — language inscribed in the dedicatory prayer of the first Latter-day Saint temple. D&C 130:18–19 declares that "whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection."[16] D&C 101:32–34 promises that at Christ's coming "he shall reveal all things… things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof."[17] The Restoration anticipates the convergence of revealed and discovered truth. Eyring articulated exactly this framework. The CES Letter quoted it.
The doctrine-vs-opinion framework
The framework that distinguishes Church doctrine from individual leader opinion on the physical world is foundational to the science questions, because the CES Letter's argument depends on the framework not existing. It does exist, with a continuous documentary chain: Brigham Young 1871, the 1909/1910/1925/1931 First Presidency statements, the 1992 BYU Evolution Packet, and the 2016 Church History Topics page and New Era Q&A. The framework's documentary articulation is contemporaneous with the rise of the modern scientific findings the CES Letter cites — built as the science emerged, not after the science forced its hand. Brigham Young 1871 came after Lyell (1830–1833) and Darwin (1859) but well before plate tectonics (1972), the modern radiometric dating consensus, the DNA double helix (1953), and the Neanderthal genome (2010). The 1931 memorandum predates the 1956 lead-lead isochron that established the 4.54-billion-year age of the earth. The framework is not pre-scientific; it was articulated parallel to early modern science, and well before the specific findings the CES Letter's argument relies on.
The 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man"
In November 1909 the First Presidency under Joseph F. Smith — together with John R. Winder and Anthon H. Lund — published "The Origin of Man" in the Improvement Era.[18] The statement makes claims about (a) divine parentage of humans ("All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity"), (b) Adam's headship over the human family, (c) "Adam was 'the first man of all men'" (a real claim the article must engage), and (d) animal-to-human evolution as "the theories of men." It is silent on the biological mechanism by which Adam's body was formed — neither affirming nor denying instantaneous creation, special creation from dust, or development from earlier organisms. The 1909 statement's doctrinal core is divine parentage, not a particular biological mechanism for Adam's body.
Five months later, in April 1910, the First Presidency-approved Improvement Era editorial "Priesthood Quorums' Table: Origin of Man" listed three possible explanations for the physical origin of Adam and Eve's bodies: natural development from earlier organisms, transplantation from another world, and mortal birth in this one — without endorsing any one of them.[19] The 1910 editorial is the cleanest single-source proof that the 1909 statement was not a closed-door rejection of evolutionary mechanism. It is reproduced in full in William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Greg Kofford Books, 2005), pages 39–41.[20]
The 1925 First Presidency statement
In September 1925 the First Presidency under Heber J. Grant — together with Anthony W. Ivins and Charles W. Nibley — issued "'Mormon' View of Evolution" in the Improvement Era in the wake of the Scopes Trial.[21] The 1925 statement reissued the doctrinal core of the 1909 statement (divine parentage of humans, Adam as primal parent) but softened the 1909 anti-science language. It did not repeat the "theories of men" formulation. It used "evolve" positively in regard to human progression toward godhood. It did not address pre-Adamic life.
The 1931 First Presidency memorandum to general authorities
On 5 April 1931 the First Presidency under Heber J. Grant — together with Anthony W. Ivins and Charles W. Nibley — issued a confidential memorandum to the Quorum of the Twelve, the First Council of Seventy, and the Presiding Bishopric. The memorandum settled a contentious public dispute between Elder Joseph Fielding Smith — who argued for young-earth creationism, no pre-Adamic death, and rejection of pre-Adamites — and Elder B.H. Roberts, who argued for an ancient earth, pre-Adamic life, and likely pre-Adamites in his then-unpublished manuscript The Truth, the Way, the Life.[22] Elder James E. Talmage — an apostle who held a PhD in geology from Illinois Wesleyan University (1896) — was actively involved on the Roberts side, and would within months deliver his Tabernacle address "The Earth and Man" affirming death before the Fall and an ancient earth from the pulpit at the First Presidency's invitation.[23]
Two passages from the 1931 memorandum are preserved as direct quotation in Evenson and Jeffery's compilation:
"Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. … Leave Geology, Biology, Archaeology and Anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church."[3:1]
"The doctrine of the existence of races of human beings prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church; and, further, that the conception that there was no death upon the earth prior to Adam's fall is likewise declared to be no doctrine of the Church."[3:2]
The memorandum's net effect — as Sherlock (1980), Keller (1982), and Evenson and Jeffery (2005) document — was to instruct general authorities that neither side of the controversy had been accepted as a doctrine of the Church, with the burden falling on individual leaders not to teach personal speculation as binding doctrine.[22:1][3:3]
The 1931 memorandum is the single most important doctrinal data point in the entire science section. It does three things explicitly. First, it states that the dispute over pre-Adamic death is not a doctrinal question — neither side is the Church's position. Second, it tells general authorities to leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology to scientific research, defining those fields as outside the Church's doctrinal jurisdiction. Third, it identifies "the fundamental doctrines of the Church" as the load-bearing core that all general authorities agree on, distinguished from the speculative questions on which they may legitimately disagree. The documentary history establishes that the memorandum was a deliberate intervention by the First Presidency to stop a public dispute, not a settled pronouncement leaning either way.[22:2]
The 1931 Talmage Tabernacle address "The Earth and Man"
The 1931 memorandum is paired with another 1931 document of equal significance: James E. Talmage's Tabernacle address "The Earth and Man," delivered 9 August 1931 at the request of the First Presidency to balance Joseph Fielding Smith's contemporaneous teachings, then published in the Deseret News on 21 November 1931 with First Presidency imprimatur, and reprinted as a Church pamphlet.[23:1] An apostle who held a PhD in geology, addressing the Latter-day Saint people from the Tabernacle pulpit at the First Presidency's invitation, said:
"The whole series of chalk deposits and many of our deep-sea limestones contain the skeletal remains of animals. These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation."[23:2]
"I am not denying the inspiration of the [scriptures], but their writers were not given the responsibility of teaching geology to the world."[23:3]
"The opening chapters of Genesis, and scriptures related thereto, were never intended as a textbook of geology, archaeology, earth-science or man-science."[23:4]
"The Bible is not a textbook on geology."[23:5]
The fact of Church publication is doctrinally significant. This was not a private opinion; it was a Church-published apostolic teaching, delivered with First Presidency authorization, that stands as a counterweight to the Joseph Fielding Smith line. Talmage's affirmation of an ancient earth and death before the Fall represents the positive articulation of what a faithful apostle could publicly teach with First Presidency support; the memorandum represents the negative articulation that the pre-Adamic-death and pre-Adamites questions are not Church doctrine.
The 1992 BYU Evolution Packet and the Encyclopedia of Mormonism
The 1992 BYU Evolution Packet — formally titled "Evolution and the Origin of Man" — was compiled by William E. Evenson and approved by the BYU Board of Trustees, which is composed of the First Presidency, members of the Quorum of the Twelve, and others.[24] The packet compiles the 1909, 1910, 1925, and 1931 First Presidency statements together with the Encyclopedia of Mormonism's "Evolution" entry. Its existence demonstrates that as recently as 1992 the doctrine-vs-opinion framework was being institutionally codified at the highest level — not retreated from. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (Macmillan, 1992) entry on "Evolution," authored by Evenson (PhD physics; co-author of the definitive Greg Kofford 2005 compilation), is the cleanest single-page articulation of the framework.[25]
The 2016 Church History Topics page and New Era Q&A
The 2016 Church History Topics page on "Organic Evolution" states the institutional position directly:
"The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species' inherited traits over time, is a matter for scientific study."[5:1]
The 2016 New Era Q&A on evolution articulates it more explicitly:
"The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution."[6:1]
"Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution."[6:2]
"The details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed."[6:3]
"There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created."[6:4]
The "nothing has been revealed" formulation is the strongest articulation. The 2016 documents are the most recent Church-website articulations of a framework whose continuous documentary trail runs back through 1992, 1931, 1925, 1910, 1909, and (in Brigham Young's 1871 articulation, see below) earlier still. The framework is older than the CES Letter, older than the modern radiometric dating of the earth, and older than the modern phylogenetic understanding of species divergence.
Further Reading
The institutional sources for the doctrine-vs-opinion framework are: the 1992 BYU Evolution Packet (biology.byu.edu) compiling the 1909, 1910, 1925, and 1931 First Presidency statements; the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992) entry on "Evolution" by William E. Evenson (eom.byu.edu); the 2016 Church History Topics page "Organic Evolution" (churchofjesuschrist.org); and the 2016 New Era Q&A "What does the Church believe about evolution?" (churchofjesuschrist.org). The definitive scholarly compilation is William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Greg Kofford Books, 2005).
Brigham Young's 1871 articulation predates the framework's formal codification
The framework's continuous chain runs back further than 1909. On 14 May 1871 — thirty-eight years before the 1909 statement, in Journal of Discourses 14:115–117 — Brigham Young addressed the question of the earth's age directly:
"Whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject."[4:1]
"If geologists and philosophers have proved by demonstration to themselves and to others that this world has been in existence for hundreds of millions of years, they have good reason for their faith."[4:2]
A Church President in 1871 explicitly accommodated geological timescales and acknowledged that geologists "have good reason for their faith" in millions of years. This is nineteenth-century institutional restraint on a question that would not become a sustained scientific challenge to traditional Christianity until the late twentieth century.
What the framework does and does not do
The framework distinguishes (a) canonized scripture and First Presidency declarations sustained as doctrine from (b) sermons, pamphlets, books, and individual leader opinions. It does not say the second category is unimportant or wrong; it says it is not binding doctrine and should be treated as the speculation it is. The framework is what a continuing-revelation tradition with apostolic authority needs to function: a way of distinguishing load-bearing claims (divine parentage, the Fall, the Atonement, Adam and Eve as covenant-bearers) from the non-binding interpretive work apostles do across cultural and scientific eras.
Worth Acknowledging
The asymmetry steelman is real: the framework distinguishes doctrine from opinion most cleanly in retrospect. When science is overwhelming, the framework absorbs it ("the Church has no official position"); when the science is still contested, leaders teach positions that look authoritatively binding to members and are later retroactively reframed as opinion. The article does not pretend this asymmetry away. It returns to it in the closing assessment.
The Tower of Babel and the Jaredite anchor in Ether 1
The CES Letter's fourth numbered claim begins: "Tower of Babel: (a staple story of the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon)."[2:1] The argument is parenthetical: the Tower of Babel is mythological; Ether 1 anchors the Jaredite migration to the Tower; therefore the Book of Mormon contains a fabricated historical claim. Of the four numbered claims, this is the only one where canonized Latter-day Saint scripture itself makes a positive claim that the linguistic and archaeological record does not straightforwardly support. The doctrine-vs-opinion framework can absorb the global flood, the age of the earth, and the Neanderthal-DNA question because none is anchored in canonized scripture in the same direct way. The Babel/Jaredite anchor is in Ether 1:33, and the article must engage it directly.
What the canonized text actually says
Ether 1:33 reads:
"Which Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered."[26]
The text positions the Jaredite migration "at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people." On a Genesis-11-as-modern-history reading that places the migration at Archbishop James Ussher's reverse-engineered ~2200 BC date.[27] On any historical reading, it places the migration contemporaneously with whatever event the Tower of Babel narrative is reporting.
What the linguistic record establishes
The linguistic record does not show all human languages diverging from a single event ~2200 BC. Sumerian written records exist from approximately 3500 BC; Egyptian hieroglyphic writing from approximately 3300 BC; Akkadian cuneiform from approximately 2800 BC. Each of these scripts records a fully developed language pre-dating the Ussher-chronology Tower date. Indo-European linguistic divergence is reconstructed across tens of thousands of years through comparative philology and is dated by Bayesian phylogenetic methods to a Proto-Indo-European common ancestor approximately 8,000–9,500 BP — far older than 2200 BC. The simple "all human languages confused at one moment" reading of Genesis 11 is contradicted by the documentary linguistic record. Ben Spackman's 2024 doctoral dissertation at Claremont Graduate University documents how the late-twentieth-century Latter-day Saint default reading of Genesis 11 became progressively more concordist (treating biblical narrative as compatible with modern history) under the influence of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie's Protestant-fundamentalist-adjacent hermeneutic, and how the older Latter-day Saint readings (the 1909/1910/1925/1931 framework, the Talmage tradition) were more cautious about treating Genesis 11 as a falsifiable modern-history claim.[28]
What the archaeological record establishes
The Tower of Babel narrative is not spun from nothing. The most plausible referent is Etemenanki — meaning "House the Foundation of Heaven and Earth" — the seven-stage ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in central Babylon. Etemenanki was excavated 1899–1917 by Robert Koldewey of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, who reconstructed dimensions of approximately 91 meters by 91 meters at the base and an estimated height of approximately 91 meters at peak phase. Andrew R. George — Professor of Babylonian at SOAS, University of London — has published the standard scholarly survey arguing the biblical Tower of Babel narrative reflects Israelite encounter with Etemenanki, whether direct (during the Babylonian exile) or via cultural transmission.[29] Etemenanki is a real architectural feature underlying the biblical narrative, anchored in a specific Mesopotamian temple-tower tradition rather than spun from cultural void.
The Hebrew narrative as theological polemic
The Hebrew narrative of Genesis 11 contains a deliberate pun. The Babylonians called their city Bāb-ilim — "Gate of God" — in Akkadian. The Hebrew narrator called the city Bābel and grounded the wordplay on the Hebrew verb balal (בָּלַל), "to confuse, mingle, mix."[30] The wordplay is theological polemic: Yahweh confounds the Babylonian imperial gateway-to-heaven, exposing it as confusion. Read in this register, Genesis 11 is not primarily a modern-history account of the origin of all human languages; it is an Israelite theological response to Mesopotamian imperial cosmology — a polemic against the temple-tower system that grounded Babylonian religion. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J. Larsen's In God's Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (Eborn Books and Interpreter Foundation, 2014) reads Genesis 11 in conversation with the Sumerian Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Akkadian flood and tower traditions.[31]
Walker Wright's anti-Babel polemic reading of Ether
The most directly relevant 2024 scholarly piece on the Jaredite anchor is Walker Wright, "The Man with No Name: The Story of the Brother of Jared as an Anti-Babel Polemic," Interpreter 62 (2024): 319–333.[32] Wright argues that Moroni's opening of Ether deliberately presents the Brother of Jared as the theological inversion of Nimrod and Babel:
| Babel (Genesis 11) | Brother of Jared (Ether 1, 3, 6) |
|---|---|
| Babelites sought to "make us a name" (Gen 11:4) | The Brother of Jared remains unnamed in the entire text — "unworthy before thee" (Ether 3:2) |
| Nimrod was "a mighty hunter before the Lord" (Gen 10:9) — against God | The Brother of Jared comes "before the Lord" with "exceeding faith" (Ether 3:9) |
| "The Lord did there confound the language of all the earth" (Gen 11:9) | "The Lord… did not confound" the Jaredites' language (Ether 1:35–37) |
| Babelites refused to fill the earth | Jaredites "spread upon the face of the land" (Ether 6:18), fulfilling the Edenic mandate |
| Tower with top reaching heaven (Gen 11:4) | Mount Shelem ascended "because of its exceeding height" (Ether 3:1) |
| Counterfeit gateway to God | Mount Shelem as genuine theophany site |
Wright reads Moroni's account as a deliberate polemical inversion of Genesis 11 — a sophisticated literary feature one would expect from authentic ancient text engaging known narrative tradition, not from nineteenth-century rural-American fabrication. Hugh Nibley's World of the Jaredites (1952; Collected Works vol. 5, 1988) had earlier argued that the Jaredite "great tower" sat in a broader ancient Near Eastern context of imperial tower-temples (ziggurats, the Esagila tradition) distinct from the specific Genesis 11 reception history.[33] George A. Pierce's "The Tower of Babel, the Jaredites, and the Nature of God" (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2022) provides further direct scholarly engagement with the Jaredite anchor question.[34]
Engaging the steelman: Ether 1:33's chronological specificity
The strongest critical version of the Babel argument presses that Ether 1:33's "at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people" makes a chronologically specific claim that the linguistic record contradicts.[35] Even granting the framework, even granting the polemical-inversion reading, the canonical text positions the Jaredite migration contemporaneously with the language-confounding event. This is the genuine stress point. Three faithful readings address it.
The first reading is the Moroni-as-abridger reading: Ether is Moroni's abridgment of Mosiah's translation of the Jaredite record (Ether 1:1–2). The framing "at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people" is Moroni's interpretive overlay locating an ancient Bronze Age migration within the framework Moroni knew from the brass plates. The historical core — a group migrating from Mesopotamia to the Americas — does not require that every framing detail be read as literal modern-history report.
The second reading is the not-the-specific-Babel reading: the "great tower" of Ether 1 is an ancient Near Eastern temple-tower in the broader ziggurat tradition, not specifically the Genesis 11 Tower of Babel in its later reception form. Hugh Nibley made this case directly. Bronze Age Mesopotamia experienced multiple major dynastic collapses with linguistic and political fragmentation — the Akkadian collapse around 2150 BC, the Gutian invasions, the Ur III collapse around 2000 BC. A Bronze Age trans-oceanic migration during one of these events is consistent with the archaeological record.
The third reading is the anti-Babel polemic reading developed by Wright (2024). On this reading, Moroni's framing is deliberately literary — positioning the Brother of Jared narrative as the theological inverse of the Babel narrative, with the Jaredites' linguistic preservation as the polemical contrast to Babel's confusion. The chronological anchor on this reading is generic to the Babel narrative as a literary type, not to a specific historical 2200 BC moment.
Each reading is internally coherent and faithful — meaning each preserves the Book of Mormon's authority as ancient scripture while honestly acknowledging that the specific chronological framing of Ether 1:33 is interpretive rather than concordist-modern-history. The article does not pretend the question is settled or that the chronological anchor poses no interpretive pressure. The faithful reader's confidence in these readings depends in part on prior confidence in the Book of Mormon as ancient scripture, and the article does not pretend otherwise.[36]
Worth Acknowledging
Ether 1:33 anchors the Jaredite migration to the language-confounding event. The linguistic record contradicts a single language-origin event ~2200 BC. Faithful scholarship offers three legitimate readings — Moroni-as-abridger, not-the-specific-Babel, and anti-Babel polemic — each of which reframes the chronological anchor as interpretive rather than concordist-modern-history. The honest answer is that this is the hardest question in the cluster, and faithful scholarship is actively engaging it. The Church's authority claim does not require the most concordist reading of Ether 1:33 to be correct.
The global flood
The CES Letter's fourth numbered claim continues: "Global flood: 4,500 years ago."[2:2] The argument is unstated and parasitic: the reader is expected to assume Latter-day Saint scripture and prophets require a global flood; geology disproves a global flood; therefore Latter-day Saint scripture is false. The CES Letter quotes no Latter-day Saint leader on the flood — the case is built on the reader's prior assumption.
What the geology establishes
A planet-covering flood ~2500 BC is geologically impossible. There is no global sedimentary layer dating to that period; the stratigraphic record is continuous through the proposed flood date. There is no global ice-cap evidence of submersion; the Vostok and Greenland ice cores show continuous record through the proposed flood date. There is no global extinction signature ~4500 BP; the Pleistocene-Holocene transition extinctions occurred approximately 12,000 BP, not at the proposed flood date. There is no physical mechanism for sourcing or removing approximately 10²¹ kg of water in months; Earth's water budget is conserved on the relevant timescale. Continuous tree-ring dendrochronology from bristlecone pine extends to approximately 10,000 BP without interruption. Continuous varved lake sediment records — such as Lake Suigetsu, Japan — extend to approximately 50,000 BP without interruption. The CES Letter is correct that a global flood ~4,500 years ago is geologically impossible. The faithful response cannot deny this and should not try. The faithful response rests instead on the Hebrew text and the doctrine-vs-opinion framework.
The Hebrew word eretz and ancient cosmology
The Hebrew word translated "earth" in Genesis 6–9 is eretz (אֶרֶץ), appearing more than 2,500 times in the Hebrew Bible. The standard lexicons — Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1907; Hendrickson reprint 1996) and Koehler-Baumgartner's The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill 1994–2000) — list its semantic range as "earth" (the world as a whole), "land" (a country or territory), "ground" (soil, dust), "the underworld."[30:1][37] The same word translates as "land of Egypt" or "land of Canaan" elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. There is nothing distinctively Latter-day Saint about reading eretz as having a regional sense in Genesis 6–9 — this is basic Hebrew lexicography.
Ancient Israelite cosmology did not envision "the planet earth" in the modern sense. The Israelite cosmos was a flat earth under a firmament dome (raqia, רָקִיעַ), with waters above the firmament and waters under the earth. John H. Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP Academic, 2009) is the standard non–Latter-day Saint scholarly treatment of this point and is cited extensively by faithful Latter-day Saint scholars including Ben Spackman, David E. Bokovoy, and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.[38] David E. Bokovoy's Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis–Deuteronomy (Greg Kofford Books, 2014) — by a faithful Latter-day Saint with a Brandeis PhD in Hebrew Bible — provides the Hebrew-text grounding for eretz semantics from a Latter-day Saint–friendly angle.[39] Duane E. Jeffery's "Noah's Flood: Modern Scholarship and Mormon Traditions," Sunstone 134 (October 2004): 27–45, notes that the spherical-earth concept "did not appear in Jewish thought until the fourteenth or fifteenth century."[40] When Genesis 6–9 says the flood covered "all the earth" (kol ha'aretz), the Iron Age Hebrew text is describing the known regional world, not the planetary globe.
The local-flood reading is the most philologically responsible reading of the Hebrew. Reading "all the earth" in Genesis 6–9 as "all the planet" imports modern cosmological assumptions into an ancient text. A regional catastrophic flood that devastated an entire ancient Near Eastern civilization and seemed, to its survivors, to cover the whole visible world would be described in exactly the language Genesis uses. The Black Sea hypothesis — articulated in William Ryan and Walter Pitman's Noah's Flood (Simon & Schuster, 1998) — proposes a catastrophic flooding event when rising Mediterranean waters breached the Bosporus shelf.[41] The hypothesis has been disputed within geology, and subsequent literature has gone in both directions on the magnitude question. The broader case for catastrophic regional flooding events as substrate for ancient Near Eastern flood traditions is robust regardless of how the specific Black Sea timing question resolves.
The Mesopotamian flood traditions — Atrahasis Epic (c. 1700 BC, Old Babylonian), Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI (c. 1200 BC, Standard Babylonian recension), Sumerian Flood Story / Eridu Genesis (c. 1600 BC) — are independent of the biblical narrative and pre-date it.[42] Each preserves a flood account in which a god-favored survivor builds a vessel, preserves humanity and animals, and re-establishes civilization after the waters recede. The structural parallels between Genesis 6–9 and these Mesopotamian narratives are extensive. The simplest reading is that the biblical flood narrative reflects shared ancient Near Eastern memory of catastrophic regional flooding events — events that, to the people who experienced them, were world-ending — preserved across cultures in narrative form. Ben Spackman's "Let's talk about the flood. A lot." (February 2026) reads Genesis 6–9 as cosmological un-creation/re-creation narrative — un-making followed by re-making, with Noah as a "new Adam" receiving the Genesis 9:1 "be fruitful and multiply" mandate that mirrors the original creation mandate.[43] The narrative's theological core (God's judgment, Noah's obedience, the post-flood covenant of Genesis 9, the rainbow as covenant sign) does not depend on planetary inundation.
Engaging the steelman: "baptism of the earth"
The strongest critical version of the global-flood argument presses what three Church Presidents and a future Church President said about the flood.[44] Brigham Young (1860, Journal of Discourses 8:83) said: "This earth… has been baptized with water, will be baptized by fire and the Holy Ghost."[9:1] Orson Pratt (1880, Journal of Discourses 21:323) said: "A great flow of water came… sweeping away all wickedness and transgression — a similitude of baptism for the remission of sins."[10:1] John Taylor (1884, Journal of Discourses 26:74–75) said: "The earth was immersed… a period of baptism."[11:1] Joseph F. Smith (Doctrines of Salvation 2:320) said the flood was "the baptism of the earth, and that had to be by immersion."[45] Joseph Fielding Smith treated it as a literal global flood throughout his apostolic ministry and Church Presidency.[7:1] Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine said belief in a global flood was required.[8:1] That is three Church Presidents (Brigham Young, John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith) plus a future Church President (Joseph Fielding Smith) plus the most influential twentieth-century Latter-day Saint doctrinal compiler (McConkie) on the strong-global-flood side, representing close to a century of senior Latter-day Saint teaching.
The article concedes the historical record on this point. The local-flood reading is inconsistent with what the Church functionally taught for most of its history. A faithful response that accepts the local-flood reading is conceding that multiple prophets were wrong on a positive claim about the geographical scope of a physical event. The framework can absorb this — the "baptism of the earth" teaching was not canonized, the 1931 First Presidency memorandum's instruction to leave geology to scientific research applies, and the 1909/1910/1925/1931 framework is the institutional position — but the framework's absorption of this case requires the faithful reader to acknowledge that "Brigham Young, John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, and Joseph Fielding Smith were all factually wrong about the geographical scope of the flood" is the appropriate honest summary.
Paul Y. Hoskisson and Stephen O. Smoot — in "Was Noah's Flood the Baptism of the Earth?" (Let Us Reason Together, BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2016) — provide the most sustained faithful engagement with the "baptism of the earth" tradition from the Latter-day Saint scholarly side.[46] Their argument has three moves: that the "baptism of the earth" language used by Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and John Taylor has been over-read by modern commentators; that the earth is not sentient but quickened by God's Spirit, with the flood as symbolic cleansing from human sins rather than the earth's own sins; and that the earlier apostolic statements should be read as theological metaphor rather than as positive geographical-scope claims. Hoskisson and Smoot do not explicitly endorse a regional-flood reading; their reframing accomplishes removal of the principal Latter-day Saint-source argument for a literal global flood without committing on the geographical scope question.
The Latter-day Saint apostle and chemist John A. Widtsoe — PhD chemistry Universität Göttingen 1899, apostle 1921–1952 — wrote in 1943 in his Evidences and Reconciliations (p. 127):
"The fact remains that the exact nature of the flood is not known. We set up assumptions, based upon our best knowledge, but can go no further."[47]
Widtsoe's position represents the mid-twentieth-century apostolic articulation of the doctrine-vs-opinion framework applied directly to the flood question. The canonized scriptures on the flood (Genesis 6–9, Moses 7–8, Ether 13:2, Alma 10:22) are compatible with a regional reading on the most philologically responsible reading of the Hebrew text and the broader ancient Near Eastern context.
Engaging the sharpest steelman: Adam-ondi-Ahman and D&C 116
The sharpest version of the global-flood steelman presses Joseph Smith's identification of Adam-ondi-Ahman in Daviess County, Missouri.[48] D&C 116, received 19 May 1838 at Spring Hill, Daviess County, Missouri, reads in full: "Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet." Joseph Smith and other early Latter-day Saint leaders subsequently elaborated that Adam-ondi-Ahman was also the place where Adam offered sacrifice and gathered his posterity after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden — placing Adam's post-Eden residence in Missouri.[49] The critic's pressure runs: if the flood was global, the "Adam in Missouri → flood → Noah on Mt. Ararat" sequencing requires planetary inundation to relocate post-flood humanity to the Old World. If the flood was regional, the Missouri-to-Mesopotamia sequencing requires some other geographical mechanism — and the regional reading appears to break the canonical chronology. As LDS Discussions presses the point: "at what point does the framework just become ad hoc?"[44:1]
The faithful response is the most epistemically expensive concession in this article. D&C 116 itself is twenty-eight words of canonized text identifying Spring Hill as Adam-ondi-Ahman, the future gathering place "where Adam shall come to visit his people." The Adam-as-having-resided-in-Missouri sequencing is not stated in D&C 116 itself; it is subsequent extrapolation from D&C 116, the Joseph Smith History pre-publication accounts (HC 3:34–39), and statements by Brigham Young integrating D&C 116 with traditional flood geography — all under the same doctrine-vs-opinion framework the article applies elsewhere. Three faithful reconciliations are live: (1) Adam-ondi-Ahman as future eschatological site only — Spring Hill names the future gathering place where Adam "shall come" in the latter-day council described in Daniel 7, with the Brigham Young and HC elaborations being extrapolations rather than canonical claims; (2) Adam-ondi-Ahman as Adam's relocated post-Eden site without a global flood mechanism — a regional flood in the ancient Near East could devastate Mesopotamian populations without requiring the entire human population of the planet to have been concentrated there, with the Adam-ondi-Ahman → Old World migration being normal pre-flood human dispersal; (3) Adam-ondi-Ahman as theological-prophetic identification — Joseph Smith's identification of Spring Hill as a prophetic act binding the Restoration in the Americas to the cosmic narrative of Adam's posterity without committing to a specific reconstructable physical chronology. The article does not pretend the regional-flood reading reconciles cleanly with the simplest reading of the Missouri-Adam tradition; some chronological complexity is required, and all three faithful readings preserve the Restoration's load-bearing claims while engaging the regional-flood reading the Hebrew text and the science both support.
Mormonr's 132-source review
Mormonr's "The Great Flood" Q&A — at mormonr.org — provides a 132-source primary-source aggregation of Latter-day Saint leader teachings on the flood across the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.[50] The Q&A's conclusion: belief in a global flood is not required for orthodoxy. The aggregation includes the strong-global-flood statements (Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, McConkie) alongside the more cautious or explicitly regional statements (Brigham Young 1871 on geological timescales, Talmage 1931, Widtsoe 1943, the 1931 First Presidency memorandum, the contemporary scholarly consensus). The Mormonr aggregation is the cleanest single-page survey of the historical record.
Noah's Ark and bear speciation
The CES Letter's fourth numbered claim continues with the Noah's Ark scenario:
"Noah's Ark: Humans and animals having their origins from Noah's family and the animals contained in the ark 4,500 years ago. It is scientifically impossible, for example, for the bear to have evolved into several species (Sun Bear, Polar Bear, Grizzly Bear, etc.) from common ancestors from Noah's time just a few thousand years ago. There are a host of other impossibilities associated with Noah's Ark story claims."[2:3]
What the science establishes
The CES Letter is correct that bear species could not have diverged from a common ancestor within the last 4,500 years. Kutschera and colleagues (2014) date the modern Ursus genus radiation deep in the Plio-Pleistocene with substantial inter-species gene flow.[51] Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and brown bears (U. arctos) diverged approximately 150,000–500,000 years ago — far slower than the CES Letter's 4,500-year compressed timeline. Sun bears, spectacled bears, and giant pandas diverged earlier still. The "animal kinds with rapid post-Flood speciation" model — embraced by Henry M. Morris and the Institute for Creation Research, and continued by Answers in Genesis and similar Protestant young-earth-creationist organizations — argues that "kinds" (a Hebrew baraminological category) underwent rapid post-Flood speciation to produce modern species diversity. The model is rejected by mainstream phylogenetics, biogeography, and the fossil record. The Latter-day Saint Church has never endorsed it. Faithful Latter-day Saint scientists — Trent D. Stephens and D. Jeffrey Meldrum, Steven L. Peck, David H. Bailey, Ben Spackman — consistently reject it.[52][53][54] The bear example is a real falsification of literal Protestant young-earth-creationism. It is not a falsification of Latter-day Saint theology unless the article concedes the young-earth-creationist frame, which it does not.
What Latter-day Saint scripture and the Church require
Latter-day Saint theology does not require the Henry Morris-style scientific creationist model of the Ark. The Ark narrative's theological purpose — God's judgment, Noah's obedience, the post-flood covenant, the rainbow as covenant sign — does not require ursid speciation in 4,500 years. On a regional flood reading consistent with the Hebrew text, Noah preserved a representative collection of local livestock and wild animals from the regional fauna of the ancient Near East, not every bear species globally. The genealogical statements in Genesis 9–10 are compatible with regional rather than planetary scope. The bear example is what philosophers of science call steelmanning the wrong target: the CES Letter's argument is effective against Henry Morris-style scientific creationism, which the Latter-day Saint Church has never endorsed, and is presented as if it falsifies Latter-day Saint theology, which it does not.
The "discovery of Noah's Ark" claims of Bob Cornuke (BASE Institute), Ron Wyatt, Hagopian, Navarra, and others have been investigated by professional archaeologists and uniformly judged unfounded. The CES Letter does not rest on these claims. The faithful response is the doctrine-vs-opinion framework and the regional-flood reading, not an Ararat-archaeology counter-claim.
The age of the earth and the Bible Dictionary "4000 B.C."
The CES Letter's age-of-earth argument operates through the second of its four section-opening epigraphs. The CES Letter quotes the 2017 Latter-day Saint Bible Dictionary entry "Chronology of the Old Testament": "4000 B.C. – Fall of Adam."[55] The unstated argument: this date is in current Latter-day Saint scripture editions; modern radiometric dating establishes the earth's age at 4.54 billion years; therefore Latter-day Saint scripture is wrong by a factor of approximately one million.
What the science establishes
The earth is approximately 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old. This figure is established by uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals — the Jack Hills, Australia, zircons examined in Wilde and colleagues' 2001 Nature paper — and by lead-lead isochron dating of meteorites, established by Clair Patterson's 1956 Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta paper.[56][57] Independent confirmation comes from samarium-neodymium isotope ratios, ice cores from Vostok and Greenland, varved lake sediments, and dendrochronology — all converging on consistent old-earth ages. The CES Letter is correct that the earth is far older than 6,000 years. The faithful response cannot deny this.
What canonized Latter-day Saint scripture actually says
The "4000 B.C." date is not in canonized Latter-day Saint scripture. It is in the Bible Dictionary entry "Chronology of the Old Testament" and derives from Archbishop James Ussher's 1650 Annales Veteris Testamenti, which calculated creation to 23 October 4004 BC at 6 PM by adding biblical genealogies. Ussher's chronology was inserted into the margins of the King James Bible by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century publishers and absorbed into Latter-day Saint reference materials when the 1979 Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Bible was prepared.[27:1] The Bible Dictionary's own introduction states explicitly:
"Many of the entries draw on the encyclopedias and dictionaries that were part of the 1979 LDS edition of the Bible. … The items have been written by various scholars and are subject to reevaluation as new research or revelation comes to light. This dictionary is provided as a resource and is not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine."[58]
The Bible Dictionary disclaims its own doctrinal authority. The "4000 B.C." date is not a revealed date and has never been claimed as such. Brigham Young in 1871 explicitly accommodated geological timescales: "Whether [the Lord] made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject."[4:3]
Doctrine and Covenants 77:6–7 refers to "the seven thousand years of [the earth's] continuance, or its temporal existence":
"Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?
A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence."[59]
The Church's Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual (2017) clarifies: "Each seal represents 1,000 years of the earth's temporal existence."[60] The earlier 1989 manual was more explicit: "These seven thousand years do not include the period of our planet's creation and preparation as a dwelling place for man. They are limited to Earth's 'temporal existence.'" "Temporal existence" is the mortal-history period since the Fall, distinct from the eons of geological preparation. James E. Talmage's 1931 Tabernacle address made exactly this distinction. The CES Letter's argument requires reading "temporal existence" as "total existence" — a reading the canonical text does not require and the institutional manuals explicitly disclaim.
Engaging the steelman: the Bible Dictionary "4000 B.C." remains in print
The strongest critical objection at this point is that the Bible Dictionary's "4000 B.C." date is in the current Latter-day Saint editions of scripture (1979, 1981, 1995, 2013) and is distributed to every member.[55:1] The Church has known since at least Brigham Young 1871 that this date is Ussher's chronology and is not revealed. Yet it remains in the printed scriptures distributed to every member. The institutional disclaimer in the Bible Dictionary's introduction is at the front of the dictionary; the "4000 B.C." date is in the chronological tables. A reader who consults the chronological tables (which is what they are for) does not necessarily read the introduction's disclaimer first.
This is a real institutional inconsistency, and the article does not paper over it. The faithful response is the disclaimer plus the framework: the Bible Dictionary's own introduction explicitly states that entries are "not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine"; the 1931 First Presidency memorandum instructed general authorities to leave geology to scientific research; the 2016 Church History Topics page states that "the Church has no official position on the theory of evolution." Distributing a date incompatible with mainstream geology in a study aid that is not formally canonized but is bound with the scriptures is a form of institutional inconsistency that the framework absorbs but does not fully resolve.[61] An explicit note in the Bible Dictionary chronological tables flagging "4000 B.C." as Ussher's chronology rather than revealed doctrine would be a substantive improvement, and the article does not pretend the current institutional choice is optimal.
Hominid species and Neanderthal DNA
The CES Letter's first three numbered claims engage the hominid fossil record and Neanderthal DNA:
"1. 2 Nephi 2:22 and Alma 12:23-24 state there was no death of any kind (humans, all animals, birds, fish, dinosaurs, etc.) on this earth until the 'Fall of Adam,' which according to D&C 77:6-7 occurred about 7,000 years ago. It is scientifically established that there has been life and death on this planet for billions of years. How does the Church reconcile this? How do we explain the massive fossil evidence showing not only animal deaths but also the extinctions of over a dozen different Hominid species over the span of 250,000 years prior to Adam?"[2:4]
"2. If Adam and Eve are the first humans, how do we explain the dozen or so other Hominid species who lived and died 35,000 – 2.4 million years before Adam? When did those guys stop being human?"[2:5]
"3. Genetic science and testing has advanced significantly the past few decades. I was surprised to learn from results of my own genetic test that 1.6% of my DNA is Neanderthal. How does this fact fit with Mormon theology and doctrine that I am a literal descendant of a literal Adam and Eve from about 7,000 years ago? Where do the Neanderthals fit in? How do I have pre-Adamic Neanderthal DNA and Neanderthal blood circulating my veins when this species died off about 33,000 years before Adam and Eve?"[2:6]
The pre-Adamic-death theology in claim 1, the evolutionary-mechanism question in claim 2, and the Adam-creation-mechanism question are the territory of the sister article Evolution and the Fall. The fossil-hominid-species and Neanderthal-DNA components of claims 2 and 3 — and specifically what canonized Latter-day Saint scripture and the Church require about the relationship between Adam and the biological hominid lineage — are this article's territory.
What the science establishes
The fossil record of hominid species is well-established. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), Denisovans, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo floresiensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus boisei, and other hominid taxa are real species attested by fossil evidence — and in several cases by genetic evidence — predating any plausible 7,000-BP Adam date. The CES Letter is correct about the hominid fossil record.
The Neanderthal-DNA finding is well-established. Richard E. Green and colleagues' "A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome" (Science 328, 2010) established that non-African modern humans carry approximately 1–4% Neanderthal DNA, inherited through interbreeding approximately 50,000 BP.[62] The finding has been refined by Kay Prüfer and colleagues (Nature 505, 2014) and by Fabrizio Mafessoni and colleagues (PNAS 117/26, 2020).[63][64] Current best estimates of non-African Neanderthal admixture are approximately 1.5–2.1%. Modern Asian and Oceanic populations — especially Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians — additionally carry approximately 4–6% Denisovan DNA, established by David Reich and colleagues (Nature 468, 2010).[65] The CES Letter's "1.6%" figure is consistent with current estimates and is real.
What canonized Latter-day Saint scripture and the Church require
The canonized Latter-day Saint scriptures affirm divine parentage of humans (Genesis 1:26–27; Moses 2:26–27; Abraham 4:26–27), the historicity of Adam and Eve, the reality of the Fall, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The 1909 First Presidency statement reaffirmed this doctrinal core: humans are "literally the sons and daughters of Deity."[18:1] The 2016 New Era Q&A reaffirmed it in modern terms: "There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created."[6:5]
The canonized scriptures do not specify the biological mechanism by which Adam and Eve's bodies were formed. The 1910 Improvement Era editorial — First Presidency-approved — listed three possible explanations for the physical origin of Adam's body without endorsing any of them.[19:1] The 1931 First Presidency memorandum stated explicitly that "the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church" — meaning neither the affirmation nor the denial is binding doctrine.[3:4] President Spencer W. Kimball, in 1976, said: "We don't know exactly how their coming into this world happened."[66] The 2016 New Era Q&A: "The details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed."[6:6]
The relationship between Adam (the theological "first human") and the biological hominid lineage is genuinely open in current Latter-day Saint thought.
What the 1909 "first man of all men" phrase commits to
The 1909 First Presidency statement says Adam was "the first man of all men." This is a real doctrinal claim, and a reader applying the doctrine-vs-opinion framework needs to know whether the phrase is doctrinal-and-binding or peripheral leader opinion. The article's position: the phrase is doctrinal — it is part of the institutional claim that Adam holds headship over the human family. But the framework reads it as covenantal headship rather than biological first-ness. Adam is the first man in the sense of being the first to receive the divine image, the first under accountability, the first under the plan of salvation, the first covenant-bearer of the human family — not in the sense of being the first biological organism in the Homo lineage. The biological hominid lineage (Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus, anatomically modern humans before Adam) is biologically prior to but theologically distinct from the Adamic covenant line. This is the Stephens-Meldrum and Peck reading, and it is the most defensible reading of the 1909 phrase that survives the Neanderthal-DNA findings while preserving the doctrinal core.
The skeptic version of this charge presses that "covenantal first-ness" reads the 1909 phrase in a way the framers would not have recognized — that the framers likely meant biological first-ness, and reading it covenantally is retroactive reframing. The article concedes this is partly correct as historiography. But the 1910 Improvement Era editorial — five months after 1909, First Presidency-approved — listed natural development from earlier organisms as one of three possible explanations for Adam's body without endorsing any, and the 1931 First Presidency memorandum negated pre-Adamic-death and pre-Adamites as Church doctrine. The institutional documents from 1910 onward have consistently preserved the question rather than committed to biological first-ness. The covenantal-headship reading is the framework's principled engagement with what the institutional record preserved as binding versus what individual framers may have intended.
Three faithful frameworks for the Adam-and-hominids question
Three faithful frameworks for the relationship between Adam and the hominid lineage are live in current Latter-day Saint scholarship.
The first framework is Adam as first biological Homo sapiens. Adam is placed at the emergence of anatomically modern humans, approximately 200,000 BP, far older than the Bible Dictionary's 4000 BC date but consistent with the paleoanthropological emergence of Homo sapiens. This framework requires reading the 7,000-year temporal-existence framing as covenant-history rather than total-Adam-history, and requires accepting that earlier hominid species were biologically prior to but not theologically continuous with the Adamic line.
The second framework is Adam as first covenant-bearing human. Adam is the first to receive the divine image, the first under accountability, the first under the plan of salvation, and the first to enter the covenant relationship — with biological hominid history (Neanderthals, Denisovans, anatomically modern humans before Adam) preceding. Trent D. Stephens and D. Jeffrey Meldrum, Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding (Signature Books, 2001) — by faithful BYU-Idaho/Idaho State University scientists — and Steven L. Peck, Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist (Maxwell Institute, 2015) — by a BYU biology professor — have developed sustained faithful frameworks along these lines.[52:1][53:1] On this reading, the 1909 statement's "first man of all men" language refers to Adam's covenantal headship rather than his biological priority. Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is not a problem on this framework — it reflects the biological hominid history that preceded Adam's covenantal first-ness.
The third framework is Adam as agnostic on biological history. The Church affirms divine parentage and the Fall as theology while declining to commit on biological mechanism. This is the 2016 New Era "details have not been revealed" framework articulated explicitly. The honest answer to the Neanderthal-DNA-and-Adam question on this reading is we don't know exactly how the biological history relates to Adam, and the Church does not require us to commit to one specific reconciliation.
All three frameworks are live faithful options — not requiring the reader to commit to one. The CES Letter's argument requires reading the canonized scriptures as committing to "Adam as first biological Homo sapiens approximately 7,000 years ago," which is the most concordist-modern-history reading of the texts and which the canonical Latter-day Saint sources do not require.
The faithful-scientist apostolic and lay tradition
The Quorum of the Twelve has repeatedly included trained scientists who saw no conflict between their faith and their disciplines — not as token figures but as a continuous century-and-a-quarter pattern.[67] James E. Talmage took graduate coursework at Lehigh and Johns Hopkins, earned his bachelor's degree from Lehigh in 1891, received his PhD in geology from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1896, and was later awarded an honorary PhD from Lehigh in 1912. He did pioneering work on the Great Salt Lake, served as an apostle 1911–1933, and authored Jesus the Christ and Articles of Faith. His 1931 Tabernacle address "The Earth and Man" — affirming an ancient earth and death before the Fall — was Church-published in the Deseret News with First Presidency authorization.[23:6] John A. Widtsoe held a PhD in chemistry from Universität Göttingen (1899), served as president of Utah State Agricultural College and then the University of Utah, served as an apostle 1921–1952, and published Joseph Smith as Scientist (1908) and Evidences and Reconciliations (1943).[47:1] Joseph F. Merrill held a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins (1899), did pioneering work in engineering education, and served as an apostle 1931–1952. He worked on radioactive decay measurement — the physical phenomenon underlying the radiometric dating that establishes the earth's 4.5-billion-year age. Henry Eyring (1901–1981) — Berkeley PhD chemistry 1927, Princeton faculty, University of Utah graduate dean, National Medal of Science 1966, Wolf Prize in Chemistry 1980 — was the most visible Latter-day Saint scientific figure of the twentieth century.[13:1] Russell M. Nelson — pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon, performer of the first open-heart surgery in Utah (1955), co-developer of the heart-lung bypass machine, apostle 1984, Church President since January 2018 — depended throughout his career on the same biology and chemistry that establish evolution and an ancient earth. Richard G. Scott was a nuclear engineer who worked under Admiral Hyman Rickover on the Navy's nuclear submarine reactor program before serving as an apostle 1988–2015.
This is not a marginal pattern. The Church has consistently promoted scientists to its highest councils. Erich Robert Paul's Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (University of Illinois Press, 1992) — the definitive scholarly history of Latter-day Saint cosmological thinking — establishes the scientist-apostle tradition as a continuous nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Latter-day Saint feature.[67:1] Terryl L. Givens's Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought (Oxford University Press, 2014) examines the foundational chapters on Latter-day Saint cosmology, the rejection of creatio ex nihilo, and the materialist ontology that underwrites Latter-day Saint science-faith integration.[68] The Latter-day Saint tradition has theological resources for absorbing scientific findings that Protestant fundamentalism lacks: the Eighth Article of Faith ("We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly") rejects biblical inerrancy; D&C 1:24 articulates that revelation accommodates human capacity ("these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language"); D&C 131:7–8 rejects Platonic spirit-matter dualism ("there is no such thing as immaterial matter"); and the rejection of creatio ex nihilo in Joseph Smith's King Follett discourse aligns with a universe organized by a divine intelligence working with pre-existing matter.
BYU teaches evolution
The Church-funded flagship university teaches mainstream evolutionary biology as standard science. BYU's biology department has taught evolution since 1971, when Dr. Clayton White and Dr. Duane Jeffery launched the first undergraduate course in comparative evolutionary theory (Zoology 404).[69] Today BYU's biology department has one of the largest and most active graduate programs in phylogenetic systematics in the United States. BYU faculty publish in Science, Nature, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Paleobiology, treating evolutionary processes as established. The campus has an Eyring Science Center and a Talmage Building, named after the Church's two most prominent science-affirming apostles. BYU's Earth Science Museum holds tens of thousands of dinosaur specimens dated using radiometric methods that depend on millions of years.
The 1992 BYU Evolution Packet was approved by the BYU Board of Trustees — composed of the First Presidency, members of the Quorum of the Twelve, and others — precisely because faculty were already teaching evolution and students needed clarity that this was permitted.[24:1] President Russell M. Nelson, at the 2015 BYU Life Sciences Building dedication, said:
"There is no conflict between science and religion. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both."[70]
A church that opposes evolution does not fund a university that teaches it. A church that requires young-earth creationism does not house a Life Sciences Building, staff it with evolutionary biologists, and have its prophet dedicate it with that statement. Steven L. Peck (BYU biology) published Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist with the Maxwell Institute in 2015 — twelve essays integrating theistic evolution with Latter-day Saint theology.[53:2] Trent D. Stephens (BYU-Idaho) and D. Jeffrey Meldrum (Idaho State University) published Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding with Signature Books in 2001.[52:2] David H. Bailey — a faithful Latter-day Saint PhD physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — argued in "Mormonism and the New Creationism" (Dialogue 35/4, 2002) that scientific creationism is theologically inappropriate for Latter-day Saints, refuting specific YEC claims and marshalling primary Latter-day Saint sources (Brigham Young 1871, Talmage 1931, B.H. Roberts on "six or eight thousand years … flies in the face of facts," Russell M. Nelson on creation periods).[54:1]
The 1871-to-2016 institutional consistency
The CES Letter's framing implicitly treats Church statements on science as reactive — older leaders defended young-earth creationism, then later leaders quietly retreated. The actual record shows a consistent doctrine-vs-opinion distinction running through nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Latter-day Saint history.
| Year | Source | What it established |
|---|---|---|
| 14 May 1871 | Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 14:115–117 | Acknowledged that the earth might have been made "in as many millions of years," noted geologists "have good reason for their faith" — thirty-eight years before the 1909 statement.[4:4] |
| November 1909 | First Presidency, "The Origin of Man" | Declared humans "literally the sons and daughters of Deity"; doctrinal claim about divine parentage, not biological mechanism.[18:2] |
| April 1910 | Improvement Era editorial (FP-approved) | Listed three possible explanations for Adam's body without endorsing any.[19:2] |
| September 1925 | First Presidency, "'Mormon' View of Evolution" | Reissued condensed 1909 doctrinal core; softened 1909 anti-science language; used "evolve" positively in regard to human progression toward godhood.[21:1] |
| 5 April 1931 | First Presidency memorandum | "Leave Geology, Biology, Archaeology and Anthropology … to scientific research." Negated both halves of the JFS-Roberts controversy as binding doctrine.[3:5] |
| 9 August 1931 | Talmage, "The Earth and Man" Tabernacle address | An apostle who was a PhD geologist affirmed death before the Fall and an ancient earth; Church-published with First Presidency authorization.[23:7] |
| 1943 | John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, p. 127 | "The fact remains that the exact nature of the flood is not known."[47:2] |
| 1971 | BYU Zoology 404 launched (White and Jeffery) | First BYU comparative evolutionary theory course.[69:1] |
| March 1976 | Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign | "We don't know exactly how their coming into this world happened."[66:1] |
| 1992 | BYU Evolution Packet, Board-of-Trustees-approved | Compiled 1909/1910/1925/1931 statements + Encyclopedia of Mormonism "Evolution" for BYU faculty.[24:2] |
| 2015 | Russell M. Nelson, BYU Life Sciences Building dedication | "There is no conflict between science and religion."[70:1] |
| October 2016 | New Era Q&A on evolution | "The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution. The details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve … have not been revealed."[6:7] |
| 2016 | Church History Topics, "Organic Evolution" | "The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution … is a matter for scientific study."[5:2] |
The pattern across 145 years is consistent. Brigham Young's 1871 statement and the 2016 Church History Topics page substantively agree: the Church has no canonized position on creation mechanism, age of earth, or evolution. The CES Letter's "Church taught X, then walked it back" framing misreads 145 years of consistent doctrinal restraint.
Engaging the strongest critical objections
The doctrine-vs-opinion framework absorbs three of the four numbered claims — the global flood, Noah's Ark and bear speciation, and the age-of-earth/Neanderthal-DNA cluster — because none is anchored in canonized Latter-day Saint scripture in the same direct way. The Babel/Jaredite anchor in Ether 1:33 sits outside the framework as a canonized scriptural claim, engaged honestly through three readings none of which fully eliminate the chronological-anchor interpretive pressure. With this distinction in mind, a sophisticated critic can press deeper objections. These are not the CES Letter's actual arguments — they are the steelman versions a serious critic would advance.
"The framework feels like a retrofit"
The first deeper objection is that the framework feels constructed retrospectively to absorb whatever today's science establishes. The pattern: T = 0, an apostle teaches X with authority; T = +30 years, science establishes not-X; T = +50 years, the Church publishes "no official position on X"; T = +80 years, future apologists cite the T = +50 framework to deny that the T = 0 teaching was binding. The framework distinguishes doctrine from opinion most cleanly in retrospect.
The article's response is twofold. First, the framework's documentary articulation predates the specific findings the framework is accused of having retreated in response to — Brigham Young 1871 came after Lyell and Darwin but predates plate tectonics, the modern radiometric understanding of the earth's age, the DNA double helix, and the Neanderthal genome. The 1931 First Presidency memorandum predates the 1956 lead-lead isochron, the 1972 articulation of plate tectonics, and the 2010 Neanderthal genome publication. The asymmetry steelman has real force on the application of the framework to specific cases where individual leaders overclaimed; it has less force on the existence of the framework, which is documentarily older than the specific findings the framework is accused of having retreated in response to.
Second, the framework's load-bearing claims (divine parentage, the Fall, the Atonement, the historicity of Adam and Eve as covenant-bearers) have not moved across the 145-year chronology, while the peripheral leader-opinion territory (geographical scope of the flood, biological mechanism of Adam's body, age of the earth, literal vs. polemical reading of Genesis 11) has. The framework's coherence depends on the load-bearing core remaining stable while the peripheral territory remains open — and that is what the documentary record shows.
"Joseph Fielding Smith taught YEC as binding doctrine for forty years"
The second deeper objection is Joseph Fielding Smith's prolonged public advocacy of young-earth creationism, no pre-Adamic death, and a literal global flood across his apostolic ministry (1910–1970), Church Presidency (1970–1972), and through his books Man: His Origin and Destiny (Bookcraft, 1954) and Doctrines of Salvation (3 vols., compiled by Bruce R. McConkie, Bookcraft, 1954–1956).[7:2][45:1] Throughout this period, Smith treated his interpretation as the Church's doctrine — not as his personal view. Ben Spackman's 2024 doctoral dissertation documents this in detail: Smith insisted he merely read scripture plainly, yet rejected alternative readings as wrong.[28:1] Spackman's 2024 blog essay documents how Smith conflated personal interpretation with doctrine and how the 1931 First Presidency memorandum rejected his position behind closed doors.[71] His son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine (1958, 2nd ed. 1966) carried the same line, treated by lay members as quasi-canonical despite documented institutional pushback: President David O. McKay convened a First Presidency review in 1959 and assigned Marion G. Romney and Mark E. Petersen to evaluate the book, their reports identified hundreds of problematic passages, and conditions were imposed for the 1966 second edition. The institution had operational tools to constrain individual leader teaching — and used them, in the Mormon Doctrine review — but did not issue a public counterweight on the science questions to match the audience that Man: His Origin and Destiny and Mormon Doctrine reached. Talmage's 1931 "Earth and Man" was the strongest such counterweight, and it stayed as a single piece against forty years of Joseph Fielding Smith's prolific teaching.
The article concedes the historical record fully. For most of the twentieth century, functional Latter-day Saint doctrine at the General Authority and lay levels included young-earth-creationism plus no-pre-Adamic-death plus a literal global flood plus a literal Tower of Babel. The 1931 First Presidency memorandum was internal — most members never heard of it. The honest acknowledgment is that this position was overclaimed by individual leaders, but the institutional documents (1909/1910/1925/1931) had always preserved the open question. What changed in the late twentieth century was the recovery of the institutional position, not the position itself. The broader question of when the doctrine-vs-opinion distinction does and does not absorb a leader teaching repeatedly reaffirmed from senior pulpits is treated at length in Anti-Intellectualism.
"The 2016 page is silent on flood, Babel, age of earth"
The third deeper objection is that the 2016 Church History Topics page explicitly addresses evolution — and is silent on the flood, the Tower of Babel, and the age of the earth. The asymmetry: the framework is being applied unevenly, only where the science is most overwhelming.
The article's response is that the institutional pattern is to articulate the framework as questions become contested and as the institutional need to clarify rises. The 2016 evolution page exists because evolution was the most contested twentieth-century science-faith question for Latter-day Saints; the 1992 BYU Evolution Packet existed because BYU faculty were teaching evolution and faculty needed clarity. Comparable institutional clarifications on the flood, Babel, and age of earth exist in less centralized form: the 1931 First Presidency memorandum applies to all four questions; the Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual's "temporal existence" framing handles the age-of-earth question; Widtsoe's 1943 "exact nature of the flood is not known" handles the flood question; the FAIR resources, Mormonr's "The Great Flood" Q&A, the Hoskisson and Smoot RSC chapter, and the Walker Wright Interpreter article handle the specific scholarly engagement. The Church has not issued a centralized "no official position on the flood" page comparable to the evolution page, and the article concedes that this is an asymmetry in institutional clarification effort. But the underlying framework applies symmetrically — geology is geology, archaeology is archaeology, anthropology is anthropology, and the 1931 memorandum's instruction to leave them all to scientific research applies to each.
"The continuing-revelation defense cuts both ways"
The fourth deeper objection is that invoking continuing revelation to handle past leader errors cuts both ways. If a Church President can be wrong about pre-Adamic death and the global flood — questions he treated as revealed and binding — what else might a current Church President be wrong about? The skeptic version of this charge points to two specific reversals beyond the science questions: the race-and-priesthood ban (1852–1978), reversed by Official Declaration 2 and increasingly distanced from in the Church's 2013 "Race and the Priesthood" Gospel Topics Essay; and the framing of polygamy as essential to exaltation (1843–1890), substantially reframed in the 1890 Manifesto and through twentieth-century institutional distancing.
The article's response acknowledges the reversals directly rather than asserting the framework around them. The race-and-priesthood ban was a temporal policy about who could exercise the priesthood and enter Latter-day Saint temples; it was not a doctrine of God's nature, the Atonement, the Fall, or human divine parentage. The 2013 Gospel Topics Essay disavows the racial theories advanced to justify the ban — including statements by Brigham Young, John Taylor, and other leaders — and locates them as the same kind of nineteenth-century leader-opinion territory the article has located the "baptism of the earth" teaching in.[72] The full case is treated in Priesthood and Temple Ban. Similarly, polygamy's relationship to exaltation was reframed under the 1890 Manifesto and subsequent institutional development; the canonized 1981 D&C 132 remains in the canon but its application has shifted significantly. These shifts are theologically and pastorally significant — and the article does not minimize them — but they are reversals on policy and practice and on the application of doctrine, not reversals on the existence of God, the divine parentage of humans, the reality of the Atonement, or the historicity of Adam and Eve.
The non-stipulative distinction the article relies on is this: the load-bearing core is what the canonized scriptures, the temple ordinances, the sacrament, the Articles of Faith, and the First Presidency declarations sustained as doctrine actually anchor — God exists; humans are His sons and daughters; Christ atoned for humanity; Joseph Smith was called as a prophet of the Restoration; the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be; Adam and Eve are historical covenant-bearers and the Fall is a real event; the priesthood was restored. These propositions have not moved across the 145-year chronology. The peripheral territory the framework absorbs is everything outside that core — the geographical scope of the flood, the biological mechanism of Adam's body, the age of the earth, the specific reading of Genesis 11, the racial theories advanced to justify the priesthood ban, the application of polygamy to exaltation. That territory has shifted substantially, and the framework absorbs the shifts as the kind of clarification continuing revelation is for.
The skeptic's natural reply: "this is too convenient — every shift is reframed as peripheral after the fact." The article concedes the present-tense epistemic challenge is not eliminable. The framework cannot give a member real-time certainty about which current teachings will turn out to be peripheral; it can only show that the load-bearing core has been stable across the documented reversals, and that the core is the part the Church's claim to revealed truth actually depends on. If the core moved, the framework would be falsified. This is not a perfect defense, and the article does not pretend it is.[73]
Course-correction as institutional strength
Every religious tradition that touches the physical world encounters moments where older interpretations collide with new evidence. The question is whether a tradition has the resources to course-correct without abandoning its core commitments. Catholicism's reconciliation with heliocentrism took 360 years, from Galileo's 1633 trial to John Paul II's 1992 Vatican apology.[74] Protestant fundamentalism remains officially committed to young-earth creationism in many denominations: the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod holds to literal six-day creation; Answers in Genesis treats young-earth as essential biblical fidelity. The Latter-day Saint Church does not have these commitments. The Church's openness on age of earth (Brigham Young 1871, Talmage 1931, BYU 1992, "no official position" 2016) is faster than Catholicism's reconciliation with heliocentrism by a substantial margin, and theologically more accommodating to science than major branches of Protestant fundamentalism.
The Church's ability to produce both James E. Talmage (advocate of an ancient earth, death before the Fall, pre-Adamic life) and Joseph Fielding Smith (young-earth creationism, no pre-Adamic death) — and let both speak — is a feature of an institution that distinguishes between revealed doctrine (binding) and individual interpretation (not binding). The 1931 First Presidency memorandum codified this distinction in writing. The 1992 BYU Evolution Packet codified it institutionally. The 2016 Church History Topics page codified it on the Church's official website.
Assessment
The CES Letter's argument fails on its own terms because it requires the doctrine-vs-opinion framework not to exist. The framework does exist, with documentary primary-source backing in 1871, 1909, 1910, 1925, 1931 (twice), 1992, 2015, and 2016 (twice). The CES Letter's claim that the Church has been "discredited" by science requires conflating individual leader opinion with binding doctrine, and that conflation does not survive engagement with the actual record.
The framework absorbs three of the four numbered claims — the global flood, Noah's Ark and bear speciation, and the age-of-earth/Neanderthal-DNA cluster — with intellectual honesty about the leader-opinion territory it had to absorb. The Babel/Jaredite anchor in Ether 1:33 sits outside the framework as canonized scripture, engaged through three faithful readings (Moroni-as-abridger, not-the-specific-Babel, anti-Babel polemic) without pretending the chronological-anchor interpretive pressure is eliminated. The framework's load-bearing core has remained stable across 145 years; the peripheral territory has been formally and institutionally identified as outside the Church's doctrinal jurisdiction since at least 1931. The faithful-scientist tradition (Talmage, Widtsoe, Merrill, Eyring, Nelson, Scott) demonstrates that Latter-day Saint theology has the resources to integrate scientific findings without collapsing.
What stands firm when the science questions get genuinely difficult — and where clean answers are not available — is the Book of Mormon. It was produced through approximately sixty working days of dictation across April–June 1829, approximately 269,000 words, by an unschooled translator who had no access to the linguistic, archaeological, or geographical sources that would have been required to fabricate it. There were no substantive textual revisions in subsequent editions; eleven witnesses had decades to recant for personal advantage and zero recanted; no naturalistic explanation advanced over 195 years has survived examination. The science weight on the Book of Mormon's core claims runs the other direction over time: chiasmus (discovered by John W. Welch in 1969), Hebraisms preserved in the Original Manuscript and later edited out of printed editions, the NHM altars at Marib, Yemen, attesting "Nahom" (1 Nephi 16:34) in the right place at the right time in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, ancient Near Eastern coronation patterns, treaty forms, and ritual cleansings unknown to 1829 frontier America. The Tower-of-Babel/Jaredite-anchor question is hard, but it is a question of framing (how Moroni summarizes) rather than the Book of Mormon's central historical claim of a pre-Columbian American civilization. The science questions do not destabilize the Book of Mormon's load-bearing case.
Henry Eyring articulated the framework directly: "Since the Gospel embraces all truth, there can never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion."[12:1] The CES Letter quoted this — and then proceeded to argue the opposite. The Restoration's scriptures, the 145-year institutional record, and the faithful-scientist tradition together establish that the Eyring quote is the position the Church has actually held — not the position the CES Letter wishes the Church had held in order for its argument to succeed.
Bottom line: The CES Letter's "willful ignorance" charge requires the Church to have committed itself to young-earth creationism, a global flood, a literal Tower of Babel, and a 7,000-year-old earth as binding doctrine. The documentary record from Brigham Young 1871 through the 2016 Church History Topics page shows that the Church has been formally and consistently distinguishing core doctrine from leader opinion on these questions for 145 years. The framework absorbs three of the four numbered claims (the global flood, Noah's Ark and bear speciation, and the age-of-earth/Neanderthal-DNA cluster) with intellectual honesty about the leader-opinion territory it had to absorb. The Babel/Jaredite anchor in Ether 1:33 sits outside the framework as a canonized scriptural claim — engaged honestly through Moroni-as-abridger, not-the-specific-Babel, and anti-Babel polemic readings, none of which fully eliminate the chronological-anchor interpretive pressure but each of which preserves the Book of Mormon's core authority. The Church's load-bearing claims — divine parentage, the historicity of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Atonement, the Book of Mormon — remain firm.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," p. 111. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," nos. 1–4, pp. 110–111. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
First Presidency (Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, Charles W. Nibley), memorandum to the Quorum of the Twelve, the First Council of Seventy, and the Presiding Bishopric, 5 April 1931. Quoted in William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2005), 75. Documentary history in Sherlock 1982. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Brigham Young, discourse, 14 May 1871, Journal of Discourses 14:115–117. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Organic Evolution," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/organic-evolution. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"What does the Church believe about evolution?" New Era, October 2016. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/2016/10/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-evolution. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Joseph Fielding Smith, Man: His Origin and Destiny (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954). Explicit defense of young-earth creationism, no pre-Adamic death, global flood, and approximately 6,000-year earth as Church doctrine. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958; 2nd ed., 1966). Treated belief in a global flood and young-earth creationism as required by the gospel. Mormon Doctrine was widely treated by lay members as quasi-canonical despite repeated First Presidency discomfort with it. ↩︎ ↩︎
Brigham Young, discourse, 12 June 1860, Journal of Discourses 8:83. "This earth … has been baptized with water, will be baptized by fire and the Holy Ghost." ↩︎ ↩︎
Orson Pratt, discourse, 1880, Journal of Discourses 21:323. The full passage reads: "a great flow of water came, the great deep was broken up, the windows of heaven were opened from on high, and the waters prevailed upon the face of the earth, sweeping away all wickedness and transgression—a similitude of baptism for the remission of sins." ↩︎ ↩︎
John Taylor, discourse, 30 November 1884, Journal of Discourses 26:74–75. "The earth was immersed … a period of baptism." ↩︎ ↩︎
Henry Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967), 12, 31. Internet Archive scan: https://archive.org/details/faithofscientist0000eyri. ↩︎ ↩︎
Henry Eyring (1901–1981) — PhD chemistry Berkeley 1927; faculty Wisconsin (1930), Princeton (1931–1946), University of Utah graduate dean (1946–1966); National Medal of Science 1966; Wolf Prize in Chemistry 1980; approximately 600 scientific publications; namesake of the Eyring equation in chemical kinetics; father of President Henry B. Eyring. See FAIR scholar profile, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/testimonies/scholars/henry-eyring; and "The Reconciliation of Faith and Science: Henry Eyring's Achievement," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-reconciliation-of-faith-and-science-henry-eyrings-achievement/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 93:36. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 88:118. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 130:18–19. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 101:32–34. ↩︎
First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund), "The Origin of Man," Improvement Era 13, no. 1 (November 1909): 75–81. Reprinted in Ensign, February 2002, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Priesthood Quorums' Table: Origin of Man," Improvement Era 13, no. 6 (April 1910): 570. Approved by the First Presidency. Reprinted in William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2005), 39–41. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2005). The definitive primary-source compilation of First Presidency and Twelve statements 1909–1992 with scholarly commentary. The 1931 memorandum's full text and documentary context are at pp. 53–80; the 1909 statement at 13–37; the 1910 editorial at 39–41; the 1925 statement at 47–49. ↩︎
First Presidency (Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, Charles W. Nibley), "'Mormon' View of Evolution," Improvement Era 28, no. 11 (September 1925): 1090–91. Reprinted in Evenson and Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution, 47–49. ↩︎ ↩︎
Richard Sherlock, "A Turbulent Spectrum: Mormon Reactions to the Darwinist Legacy," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 13, no. 3 (Fall 1980): 33–59. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/dial/article/13/3/33/244084/. Sherlock's later companion piece, Jeffrey E. Keller, "Discussion Continued: The Sequel to the Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair," Dialogue 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 79–98, draws on Sterling Talmage's papers (the Talmage family preserved James E. Talmage's correspondence) and Heber J. Grant's diary to extend the documentary record of the 1931 affair. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V15N01_81.pdf. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
James E. Talmage, "The Earth and Man," address delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, 9 August 1931. Published in the Deseret News, 21 November 1931, with the imprimatur of the First Presidency. Reprinted as a Church pamphlet in 1931. Reprinted in The Instructor 100 (December 1965): 474–477. Online: https://interpreterfoundation.org/reprint-sm1-12-the-earth-and-man/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Evolution and the Origin of Man," BYU Board of Trustees–approved packet, compiled by William E. Evenson, 1992. Distributed to BYU faculty. Includes the 1909, 1910, 1925, and 1931 First Presidency statements plus the Encyclopedia of Mormonism "Evolution" entry. https://biology.byu.edu/00000172-29e6-d079-ab7e-69efe5890000/byu-evolution-packet. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
William E. Evenson, "Evolution," in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992). Online: https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Evolution. ↩︎
Ether 1:33. ↩︎
James Ussher, Annales Veteris Testamenti, A Prima Mundi Origine Deducti (London, 1650), reverse-engineered the date of creation to 23 October 4004 BC at 6 PM by adding biblical genealogies. Ussher's chronology was inserted into King James Bible margins by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century publishers and absorbed into Latter-day Saint reference materials when the 1979 Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Bible was prepared. ↩︎ ↩︎
Ben Spackman, "'The Scientist is Wrong': Joseph Fielding Smith, George McCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the Twentieth Century" (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2024). 300 pp., approximately 900 footnotes. ProQuest. Announcement: https://benspackman.com/2024/12/dissertation/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Andrew R. George, "The Tower of Babel: Archaeology, History and Cuneiform Texts," Archiv für Orientforschung 51 (2005/2006): 75–95. Note: this is George's focused historical-archaeological article, distinct from his cuneiform-text editions including The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford University Press, 2003). The Esagila Tablet (Louvre AO 6555) provides Babylonian dimensional and architectural details for Etemenanki; the Borsippa inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II describes the related Borsippa ziggurat Ezida and the rebuilding of Etemenanki. ↩︎
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907; reprinted Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), s.v. eretz (אֶרֶץ) and balal (בָּלַל). ↩︎ ↩︎
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J. Larsen, In God's Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (Salt Lake City: Eborn Books and Interpreter Foundation, 2014). Genesis 11 chapter online: https://interpreterfoundation.org/reprint-igil2-8-in-gods-image-and-likeness-2/. ↩︎
Walker Wright, "The Man with No Name: The Story of the Brother of Jared as an Anti-Babel Polemic," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 62 (2024): 319–333. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-man-with-no-name-the-story-of-the-brother-of-jared-as-an-anti-babel-polemic. ↩︎
Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites, Collected Works of Hugh Nibley vol. 5, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988). The World of the Jaredites originally published 1952. ↩︎
George A. Pierce, "The Tower of Babel, the Jaredites, and the Nature of God," in They Shall Grow Together: The Bible in the Book of Mormon (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2022). https://rsc.byu.edu/they-shall-grow-together/tower-babel-jaredites-nature-god. ↩︎
"The Book of Mormon and the Tower of Babel," LDS Discussions. https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/babel. ↩︎
Wright, Pierce, Bradshaw and Larsen, Bokovoy, and Spackman draw on mainstream Old Testament source-critical and ancient-Near-Eastern scholarship (Walton, Bokovoy on Hebrew text; George 2005 on Etemenanki; the Mesopotamian flood-and-tower tradition) but apply it within a framework that takes the Book of Mormon as authentic ancient scripture. A non-Latter-day Saint Old Testament scholar reading Ether 1 in isolation would not be obligated to reach Wright's anti-Babel polemic conclusion; mainstream OT scholarship outside the Latter-day Saint scriptural tradition would more naturally read Ether 1 as late literary borrowing or fabrication. The framework's response to the Babel/Jaredite anchor is intellectually serious given the prior commitment to the Book of Mormon; it does not aim to be persuasive to the reader who lacks that commitment. This is the same locating-honestly move the article applies to other faithful-scholarship cases. ↩︎
Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. M.E.J. Richardson, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000), s.v. eretz. ↩︎
John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009). Note: distinct from Walton's The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015), which addresses Genesis 2–3 anthropology rather than Genesis 1 cosmology. ↩︎
David E. Bokovoy, Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis–Deuteronomy (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014). Bokovoy holds a PhD in Hebrew Bible from Brandeis University (2012). ↩︎
Duane E. Jeffery, "Noah's Flood: Modern Scholarship and Mormon Traditions," Sunstone 134 (October 2004): 27–45. https://archive.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/134-27-45.pdf. ↩︎
William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). The Black Sea hypothesis proposes a catastrophic flooding event when rising Mediterranean waters breached the Bosporus shelf, rapidly inundating the freshwater lake that occupied the Black Sea basin. Aksu and colleagues' 2002 joint Turkish-Canadian-Greek geological survey argued the breach was less catastrophic than Ryan and Pitman propose. ↩︎
Standard editions: William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press, 1989). The Atrahasis Epic is preserved in Old Babylonian copies c. 1700 BC; the Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI in the Standard Babylonian recension c. 1200 BC; the Sumerian Flood Story / Eridu Genesis c. 1600 BC. ↩︎
Ben Spackman, "Let's talk about the flood. A lot." (February 2026). https://benspackman.com/2026/02/lets-talk-about-the-flood/. ↩︎
"The Global Flood and the Book of Mormon, Abraham, and Moses," LDS Discussions. https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/flood. ↩︎ ↩︎
Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3 vols., compiled by Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–1956), 2:320. "It was the baptism of the earth, and that had to be by immersion." ↩︎ ↩︎
Paul Y. Hoskisson and Stephen O. Smoot, "Was Noah's Flood the Baptism of the Earth?" in Let Us Reason Together: Essays in Honor of the Life's Work of Robert L. Millet, ed. J. Spencer Fluhman and Brent L. Top (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 163–188. PDF: https://rsc.byu.edu/sites/default/files/pub_content/pdf/Was_Noah's_Flood_the_Baptism_of_the_Earth.pdf. ↩︎
John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1943), 127. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 116. Received 19 May 1838 at Spring Hill, Daviess County, Missouri. ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History of the Church, ed. B. H. Roberts, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1932–1951), 3:34–39. Brigham Young and other early leaders elaborated the Adam-Missouri tradition; for representative statements see Journal of Discourses 11:336 (Brigham Young, 26 August 1866) and Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 1:74–75. The post-Eden Missouri-Adam reconstruction is nineteenth-century leader extrapolation from D&C 116, not canonized scriptural statement. ↩︎
"The Great Flood," Mormonr Q&A. https://mormonr.org/qnas/rtnwb/the_great_flood. ↩︎
Verena E. Kutschera, Tobias Bidon, Frank Hailer, Julia L. Rodi, Steven R. Fain, and Axel Janke, "Bears in a Forest of Gene Trees: Phylogenetic Inference Is Complicated by Incomplete Lineage Sorting and Gene Flow," Molecular Biology and Evolution 31, no. 8 (August 2014): 2004–2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu186. ↩︎
Trent D. Stephens, D. Jeffrey Meldrum, with Forrest B. Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Steven L. Peck, Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist (Provo, UT: Maxwell Institute Publications, 2015). https://publications.mi.byu.edu/book/evolving-faith/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
David H. Bailey, "Mormonism and the New Creationism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 35, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 39–59. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/mormonism-and-the-new-creationism/. ↩︎ ↩︎
"Chronology of the Old Testament," Bible Dictionary, The Holy Bible (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013 edition; also 1979, 1981, 1995). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/chronology-of-the-old-testament. ↩︎ ↩︎
Simon A. Wilde, John W. Valley, William H. Peck, and Colin M. Graham, "Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr ago," Nature 409 (11 January 2001): 175–178. ↩︎
Clair Patterson, "Age of meteorites and the Earth," Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 10 (1956): 230–237. ↩︎
"Introduction," Bible Dictionary, The Holy Bible (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013). Online: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/introduction. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 77:6–7. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2017), chapter 29 ("Doctrine and Covenants 77–80"). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-student-manual-2017/chapter-29-doctrine-and-covenants-77-80. ↩︎
Three factors explain why the date has remained in print despite the institutional knowledge that it is Ussher's chronology rather than revealed doctrine. Institutional inertia: the Bible Dictionary has been revised periodically — 1979 first edition, 2013 most recent revision — without the chronological tables being updated. The internal disclaimer: the introduction's "not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine" disclaimer is treated as carrying the weight needed without revising the tables themselves. Lack of triggering pressure: the 1992 BYU packet was triggered by faculty needing classroom clarity, the 2016 evolution page by the cumulative public weight of evolution findings; comparable institutional clarification on the chronological tables has not been triggered to the same degree. The framework has been applied unevenly and reactively, and the chronological tables are one instance. ↩︎
Richard E. Green et al., "A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome," Science 328, no. 5979 (7 May 2010): 710–722. DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021. Methodology was shotgun sequencing of ancient bone DNA from three Neanderthal individuals (Vindija Cave, Croatia), compared with modern human reference genomes from five geographic regions. ↩︎
Kay Prüfer et al., "The Complete Genome Sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains," Nature 505, no. 7481 (2 January 2014): 43–49. DOI: 10.1038/nature12886. Provided a high-coverage genome from Denisova Cave and refined admixture estimates. ↩︎
Fabrizio Mafessoni et al., "A High-Coverage Neandertal Genome from Chagyrskaya Cave," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 26 (2020): 15132–15136. Provided a second high-coverage genome. ↩︎
David Reich et al., "Genetic History of an Archaic Hominin Group from Denisova Cave in Siberia," Nature 468, no. 7327 (23 December 2010): 1053–1060. ↩︎
Spencer W. Kimball, "The Blessings and Responsibilities of Womanhood," Ensign, March 1976. "We don't know exactly how their coming into this world happened." ↩︎ ↩︎
Erich Robert Paul, Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992). Definitive scholarly history of LDS cosmological thinking and the rise of LDS scientism (Roberts/Talmage/Widtsoe/Merrill). For apostolic-scientist biographical detail, see also FAIR's scholar profiles, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Mormonism_and_science. ↩︎ ↩︎
Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought — Cosmos, God, Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). ↩︎
"50 Years of Teaching Evolution at BYU," BYU Life Sciences Magazine. Course Zoology 404 / Comparative Evolutionary Theory launched fall 1971 by Dr. Clayton White and Dr. Duane Jeffery. ↩︎ ↩︎
Russell M. Nelson, remarks at the dedication of the BYU Life Sciences Building, 9 April 2015. Reported in Church News, 14 April 2015. ↩︎ ↩︎
Ben Spackman, "Joseph Fielding Smith, 2 Nephi 2:22, and Death Before the Fall in Church History" (February 2024). https://benspackman.com/2024/02/joseph-fielding-smith-death-before-the-fall-and-2-nephi-222/. ↩︎
"Race and the Priesthood," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (December 2013). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/race-and-the-priesthood. The essay disavows the racial theories advanced by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Church leaders to justify the priesthood ban: "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else." ↩︎
The framework actually doing work means accepting the genuine epistemic cost of admitting that individual leaders have been wrong on positive claims (about the physical world, about race, about the application of polygamy) while preserving the core the Church's claim actually depends on. The peripheral reversals — the priesthood ban, the polygamy reframing, the YEC/no-pre-Adamic-death reversal — are real; the framework distinguishes them as not load-bearing; and the article carries this distinction without pretending the present-tense epistemic challenge of identifying which current teachings will turn out to be peripheral has been eliminated. ↩︎
The 1633 Galileo trial was formally addressed by Pope John Paul II in a 1992 statement acknowledging the Roman Catholic Church's misjudgment of Galileo. The 359-year reconciliation is the standard reference point for institutional course-correction on a scientific question. ↩︎